“Infinity in Your Hand” – November 12th, 2023

Rev. Sophia preaching, with Missy and Bob Shay, Lynn Bratley, Jean Renard Ward, Charlyn Bethell, Samantha Eyster, and Guy Urban.
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy lives by the Seven Generations principle–honoring those behind and before them in all matters. What would our lives and church community look like if we took this teaching seriously and applied it to all matters? I could be wrong, but this seems like one of the most important spiritual questions of our time, and church is the place to ruminate on it. Do yourself a favor–take a breath, slow down and come to church. Let’s explore the Indigenous wisdom that attends to the seven generations behind and before us. What would our lives and church look like if we lived with this generous, expanded spirit?

READING: “Being a Person,” by William Stafford

Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own
call. After that sound goes away, wait.

A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
even the outracing, expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.

Suddenly this dream that you are having matches
everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came there wouldn’t be any
world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.

How you stand here is important.
How you listen for the next things to happen.
How you breathe.

Consider this:

Every atom of oxygen in our lungs, of carbon in our muscles, of calcium in our bones, of iron in our blood – EVERY ATOM – was created inside a star before Earth was born.

And this: Not once in the 3-billion year history of life on this planet, has your personal line of descent been broken. For you to be here now, every one of your ancestors–human, primate, amphibian, fish, sponge, primal organism, had to pass on its genetic material to a new generation: you are literally the product of 3 billion years of evolutionary tweaks and blessed refinement.

Or this: DNA, the building block for making YOU, is highly stable and can last for tens of thousands of years. Very little of what you own right now–jewelry, treasured heirlooms, photographs, or love letters–will still exist 1000 years from now, let alone 10,0000, but your DNA will still be around and recoverable.

Thinking about vast time–the infinite stretched out behind and before us helps us get, really get, that our time in these bodies, our lives, are teeny-tiny blips in the grand scheme of things. Here’s another brain buster: homo sapiens have occupied .007% of time on Earth. 300,000 years out of 4.5 billion. 99.993% of this incomprehensible swath of time that Earth has existed has not involved us.

Humbling right?

And yet, these microscopic life blips of ours…matter. They are precious. They carry forward ancient star stuff, and they leave behind cosmic matter that ripples out in ways we will never ever know. And each of our precious, little blip lives also carry forward the stories and wisdom; hard lessons learned; mistakes of those who have come before us–right alongside the hope we all have–which is to leave this life we’ve been given to live, having contributed something good in the world, for those who will come after us. Maybe even something to be remembered for. For a time. Yes, these lives of ours matter. And are precious.

Considering the vastness of time helps put ‘what matters’–which I preached about last week–in perspective. It right sizes us. And it makes all that we do with the lives we have been given the opposite of what you might assume–not unimportant, but rather, the most important. That is the invitation to be found here.

It brings to mind Mary Oliver’s profound and wonderful question: What will you do with your wild and precious life?

The ancient philosophy of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, which many know as the Iroquois–this ancient philosophy that they live by, is called the Seventh Generation Principle. This is their highest value for living. The Seventh Generation Principle says this: to think of the seventh generation coming after you in your words, work and actions, AND to remember the seventh generation who came before, in your words, work and actions.

By allowing these two arms to coalesce at all times–BOTH/AND–in word, work and action, we do not end up being stuck in the past–clinging to it desperately–nor only thinking, worrying and toiling about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Held in balance, we become profoundly connected to ourselves, each other, and the present. That is the sacred wisdom teaching of this principle. Or as Indigenous Wisdom says–for they say it better than I can: we will know our place in the world, and when we know our place in time and in the world, we know who we are.

This is what our poet, William Stafford, is telling us about ‘Being a Person.’ That how you stand here is important. How you wait. And breathe before the river, whose very nature–like ours–is vast and in motion. Ancient and ever-evolving.

How to do this? Hold both? Infinite time, seven generations behind and before? These are the great theological, philosophical, religious questions of all human time. These are the ruminations of the mystics.

Tadodaho Chief Leon Shenandoah says that this balanced, holding, place of presence–what others call Wisdom, Enlightenment, Nirvana, Communion with God, Liberating Love–is what it means, he says, to become a ‘human being’–the highest level in this life. To become a human being. Where we rise to a place of recognition of the WHOLE–not just in this life but spanning out in either direction too. The spiritual path, he says, helps you become a Human Being.

One of my favorite wisdom teachers is Catholic Priest Father Gregory Boyle who puts it this way: the fluency of the mystic is about being ‘all there.’

I’ve sat with a lot of people at the end of their lives and every one of them have only ever wanted to talk about the moments where they were ALL THERE. Or they are trying to reconcile when they weren’t. The filler and the fodder is rendered meaningless. It’s as though, when faced with our mortality, we are given a great insight, sacred Wisdom, about what it all comes down to: being a human being that is ALL THERE.

The 18^th century poet William Blake wrote a poem called the Auguries of Innocence which begins with these words: To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour. Blake was all about glimpsing the grand in the small, understanding that comprehending the vast: like eternity, or space-time continuums; or the meaning of life: that to even begin to get any kind of glimpse of comprehension here, one must hold it in the palm of YOUR hand. Yours. Right now. Eternity in this hour. Perfectly balanced between all that was, and all that will be.

Bob and Missy, who I am so grateful for today–for sharing what they did–reminded us to count the blessings in the life of this community, where so many find purpose and meaning in their lives. They remind us about what it takes to really be HERE. How else to glimpse the profound beauty of, as Bob says, how we worship, work, and play here. By doing this well, we are better able to honor and consider those who have made our being here–this beauty–possible; and simultaneously better able to consider how to make the lives of those who are not yet here, beautiful and possible.

This month’s theme is Generosity. And you know I love etymology–word origins. This word, generosity, is merged from two Latin sources or concepts: genus and genere. Genus means origin, birth. Genere means to create and bring to life–to generate. Do you get where I’m going? Because we are back at those two arms again. All that has come before, and all that is yet to come.

To be generous in spirit, act and orientation is to hold both in careful balance and to be ALL HERE. That is how we become generous. In spirit, act and orientation.

I preached about centering your gifts last week and I hope you will think about the gifts you hope and want to leave after you have departed this precious life of yours: not just tangible. How did people feel after crossing your path? How did the Earth feel after your time on it?

I hope you will consider the gifts you have received at the hands of all those who have come before–known and unknown–through valiant acts and painful mistakes, and I hope you can be willing to learn from them, and be grateful for them.

And I hope you will see yourselves now, in this moment, as envoys of purpose, value, meaning and love. Keepers and sacred bearers, inheritors and bequesters of the Divine Infinite which is this precious life of yours set in an incomprehensibly long chain of life, it is in YOUR palm. What are you going to do with it?

Let this inescapable truth be your charge–to know yourself as blessed envoys of ancient and lasting star-stuff. For you are. For you are. Let this inescapable truth be your charge, and your gift to THIS wild and precious becoming-a-human-being life of yours. In word, work and action.

Lets’ close by listening to William Stafford’s words again:

“Being a Person,” by William Stafford

Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke
the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.
Let any season that wants to come here make its own
call. After that sound goes away, wait.

A slow bubble rises through the earth
and begins to include sky, stars, all space,
even the outracing, expanding thought.
Come back and hear the little sound again.

Suddenly this dream that you are having matches
everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.
If a different call came there wouldn’t be any
world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.

How you stand here is important.
How you listen for the next things to happen.
How you breathe.

May it be so and Amen.

Let’s sing: #Wake Now My Senses, #298